We walk into the village, coasting on fumes. We are covered in mud and sweat, clutching our backpacks. Looking for rooms.

The woman at the hostel utters four magic words. “Si, we have beds.”

This is amazing. There have been no beds in Spain for Holy Week. It’s almost Easter Sunday and we have been beggars, compelled to walk the Camino de Santiago with our hats in hand, and our hands out, looking for beds.

“Puede ayudarnos?” (Can you help us?) is a phrase I’ve grown too familiar with, asking strangers.

Many pilgrims have grown discouraged and already abandoned the trail. I know two pilgrims who dropped out and caught planes home. One woman slept in a public restroom. Spain is simply too full to find rooms. I think everyone in this country must sleep standing up.

Even the little pueblos are packed. Easter in Spain is like Times Square on New Year’s Even, minus the giant ball and the public urination.

But we have a bed. Tonight. Us. A warm bed. With a shower! I could cry.

Tonight’s hostel is small. This place is, by all means, a total dump. The bunk rooms look like Club Med for bedbugs. I don’t believe the staff has cleaned this place since the Spanish-American War. The shower smells like an intergluteal crevice. But to me, this place is pure heaven.

We are served a communal dinner. The table is surrounded with pilgrims from many nations. Denmark, Taiwan, Bosnia, South Korea, France, Austria, and Jefferson County, Alabama.

A woman brings us wine in clay pitchers, which we drink from mismatched plastic tumblers. The soup is simple, potatoes and leeks. The bread is hard enough to sand oil stains from residential driveways. And it is the best food I’ve ever tasted in my life. I am in Buckingham Palace.

Before we eat, Regina (Austria) suggests we all say grace by reciting the Lord’s Prayer, each in our own tongue.

So, one at a time we take turns saying the Lord’s Prayer. The prayer sounds different in each language. In French, the prayer is poetry. In German, it is declarative. In Korean, humble. In Russian, powerful. In Japanese, orderly. In Spanish, it is passionate. In Dutch, it is Dutch.

When my turn comes, I am folding my hands, closing my eyes. I have uttered this prayer a gazillion-and-five times in my life. But tonight is not the same. There are tears in my eye.

I am sitting at a table, with hunks of peasant bread and pauper’s wine in clay urns. And this food, this wine, along with the clothes on my back, represents all I currently own at the moment.

When I get to the part that says, “give us this day our Daily Bread,” the words wreck me. Pilgrims are nodding in agreement, because this truly is our bread for today.

After supper, I bring out my fiddle. I am fiddling quietly from an open balcony, sitting on the windowsill, overlooking an alleyway that is tangled with a network of clotheslines and hanging clothes.

I’m playing “Let’s Go Down to the Valley to Pray.” On the street below, there are several Basque teenage girls who are applauding.

The girls ask for a lively tune. So I play “Backstep Cindy.” A square dance tune. The girls join arms and begin dancing. They are not bashful, and free with their dance. They twirl and spin, and do-si-do, moving in what appear to be traditional Basque steps.

Although they are young, this whole scene strikes me as ancient and timeless. I am also thinking that something like this would never happen with teenagers in America.

There are people on a nearby balcony who ask me to sing something. So I play “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms.” My singing voice is hoarse and tired, but they are nice enough not to throw up.

Pretty soon, there are several pilgrims gathering around, and we are all singing songs. One man sings a folk melody from his country. Another woman offers a hymn from her homeland. Then someone requests that the fiddler play “Amazing Grace.”

Everyone seems to know the English lyrics to the familiar song. Even the Basque girls. I hear distant voices from across the street, also singing along. It is Holy Week. And this country loves to sing.

Some of the younger pilgrims smoke cigarettes, gazing into the dusk, just listening, as a brilliant sun dips beneath the great Iberian Peninsula horizon. Others close their eyes and sing harmony.

And just for a moment in time, during this Holy Semana, each person in this faraway village becomes family. Each person, belonging. Young and old. Male and female. Rich and poor. Even a wretch like me.

My Daily Bread couldn’t taste any better than it does today.